House of Cards (movie)

The third season of Netflix’s massive success (…we assume, since exact ratings remain a mystery) House of Cards debuts tomorrow. But before fans have the chance to binge-watch the entire thing, one lingering question hangs above it all: Where can Frank Underwood possibly go next? (Spoilers follow.)

Some quick clickers already got a look at House of Cards’ third season when Netflix accidentally posted the episodes for a brief period Feb. 11—but for those who didn’t manage to speed-binge the season, Netflix released a new promo Saturday featuring Frank (Kevin Spacey) and Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) posing for a portrait.

Netflix briefly released the third season of House of Cards online on Wednesday, two weeks before it was slated to premiere on the streaming site.

The season was supposed to drop on February 27, but users noticed that it became available Wednesday afternoon. After a short period of time, the list of episodes disappeared. However, episodes that were already streaming remained streaming—so those who loaded the episodes before they were yanked presumably can still watch them.

After the Shakespearean heights House of Cards has tried to hit throughout its first season, it’s curious to see the show’s maiden voyage conclude so anti-climactically – with a “dramatic” close-up on Frank’s phone and a muted shot of Frank pulling ahead of Claire on their late-night job. Get it? Because he’s in the running to become Vice President?

During his three decades on stage and screen, Kevin Spacey has played a lot of villains. But Francis Underwood may be his nastiest piece of business yet. The soulless center of David Fincher’s new Netflix series, House of Cards (available for streaming Feb. 1), Underwood is a seemingly genteel South Carolina congressman who’s passed over for secretary of state and plots a chesslike game of political payback with the help of his Machiavellian wife (Robin Wright) and a hungry young Beltway journalist (Kate Mara).

This story of a girl’s retreat into silent creativity after her father’s death is stingy with scientific explanation but not with the easy manipulations only a sickly child plot can provide. As the heroic psychiatrist, Tommy Lee Jones, normally electrifying, seems slightly doped; the gutsy Kathleen Turner, playing the resourceful mom, is more breathless than usual in House of Cards. The result is film as wood veneer — convincing on the surface, but fake underneath.

Kathleen Turner stridently overplays as a widowed architect too self-absorbed to see that her 6-year-old daughter (the spookily placid Asha Menina) is withdrawing into a quasi-autistic state. Touching on everything from virtual reality to Mayan mythology, Michael Lessac’s debut film is an earnest hash that wastes Tommy Lee Jones in a Noble Shrink role. Still, the unpredictability keeps you watching, and there’s one astounding visual effect involving a girl, a tree, and some finger paint.